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OpenChannels has a team of dedicated bloggers addressing targeted aspects of ocean planning and management, including communication, technology, ocean uses, and more. Our bloggers are experts in the field, drawing from their own knowledge and experience.

The OpenChannels community can also benefit from your knowledge and experience. We appreciate the diversity of perspectives in this field and welcome the use of OpenChannels for sharing these views. Do you have a perspective on ocean planning you would like to share? We'll help you do that right now: just click the button above and follow the prompts. If you are interested in blogging but have questions, please email Raye Evrard at raye [at] octogroup.org. We look forward to your contribution!

I had the honor of participating in the Global Ocean Action Summit in The Hague last week. This small conference of diplomats, NGO leaders, and philanthropy and industry representatives came together to define discrete actions for how to achieve food security and blue growth.

Broad focal areas included improving traceability, transparency, information sharing, and collaboration to address challenges such as investing in small-scale fisheries and preventing illegal fishing. For more on the official policy priorities and the new international commitments that came out of the Summit, see the summary, press release, and full official report.

By Dr Peter JS Jones, Dept of Geography, University College London (P.J.Jones [at] ucl.ac.uk)

A recent article highlights that the "Great Barrier Reef and Indigenous heritage laws face 'one-stop shop' threat", in that Australia's Environment Department is proposing to cut 'green tape' that can hinder economic development proposals. "This could mean decision-making for the dumping of materials into the Great Barrier Reef marine park being stripped from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and handed to the Queensland government." The proposal to dump dredge spoil in the GBRMP to expand Abbot Point coal terminal is a key driver of this initiative.

Americans and our visitors are increasingly discovering the nation’s oceans as a place to play. This trend is hard to miss. Any visit to the coast or to travel and tourism websites reveals the diversity of ways we now recreate in the ocean [1]. The ongoing explosion of ocean recreation involves familiar uses pursued by ever-more people (e.g. kayaking, wildlife viewing, SCUBA), as well as the emergence of new activities not envisioned just a few years ago (e.g. stand-up paddle boards, kayak fishing, jet packs).

As I was sitting down to read my bit of yoga philosophy before meditating the other day, the foghorns were sounding in English Bay near my home in Vancouver, BC. In a beautiful coincidence, the reading spoke of “dissolving the fog” to connect your heart to your head, and each time I drifted off into problem-solving during meditation the foghorn would bring me back.

It’s not that people don’t care about the environment; it’s that more pressing needs like feeding their families and paying their bills trump environmental concerns. As a marine biologist, I worry about how poverty can hinder the sustainability of fishing, and therefore endanger the future of fishing communities. The “teach a man to fish” adage can only hold true if there are fish left to catch.

The big question: How we can enable people to take a longer-term view, to fish today but save some for later?

By Dr Peter JS Jones, Dept of Geography, University College London (P.J.Jones [at] ucl.ac.uk)

An interesting Response by Charles Sheppard (2014, Marine Policy 47, 85–86) to the article by Peter Harris: Fortress: Safe haven or home? The Chagos MPA in political context (2014, Marine Policy 46, 19-21). Charles Sheppard attempts to annul the marriage between science and politics which Peter Harris' paper has reported. This left me pondering some questions.

Since the beginning of my career, I have been asked to help organizations “tell their stories” and “get their stories told.” What does that mean exactly?

In every culture, stories are used to educate, entertain, and convey genealogy. Whatever its function, storytelling is an art. A good story is entertaining, moving – it can make us laugh, cry, ponder and, sometimes, lead us to take action.

By Dr Peter JS Jones, Dept of Geography, University College London (P.J.Jones [at] ucl.ac.uk)

How do we manage marine protected areas (MPAs) in a way that makes them more effective and resilient? A recent book argues that diversity is the key to resilience, both of species in ecosystems and incentives in governance systems

There are growing societal concerns about the health of our seas and increasing interest in the potential of marine protected areas (MPAs) as a key contribution to addressing these concerns. Against this background, a recent book by Dr Peter Jones of UCL’s Department of Geography:Governing Marine Protected Areas: resilience through diversity, focuses on the argument that the social and ecological resilience of marine ecosystems can be promoted by employing a diversity of approaches in the management or governance of MPAs. He discusses such approaches in terms of ‘governance incentives’.